Bangkok--21 May--The Swatch Group Trading
Breguet honours the art of cameo carving through unique watch and jewellery creations featuring a clever blend of avant-garde technology and age-old hand-crafted expertise. Thanks to exclusive cooperation with the finest master cameo-carving artisans, Breguet adorns its collections with a splendid myriad of iridescent colours.
The Reine de Naples Cammea watch is the epitome of finesse, purity and radiance. Its cameo-carved dial is an authentic miniature sculpted from shell. The off-set hours and minutes appear to be taking discreet leave of the stage centre in order to leave room for the art of cameo carving to shine in all its glory. The diamond-studded gold case shelters the delicate relief motif beneath a sapphire crystal, while its transparent back reveals a hand-guilloch? gold oscillating weight.
The La Rose de la Reine jewellery set is a composition around a delicate cameo-engraved rosebud highlighted by a diamond ribbon and mounted on Akoya pearls. It comprises a sautoir necklace with a detachable brooch that can be worn born as an adornment of the sautoir or on its own. The main motif of this jewellery set, the cameo-engraved rose, is echoed in a bracelet on which the adornment serves to tie together three rows of pearls. This dainty cameo-engraved rose is also featured on earrings and a pendant, while a pure, understated ring rounds off this gentle, enchanting and gracefully feminine collection.
Cameo carving is a bas-relief engraving technique representing one of the world’s most remarkable hand-crafted skills with a status subtly bordering on that of an art form. Performed in materials featuring contrasting colour strata, cameo carving was originally done on hard stones such as sardonyx and cornaline, but is also made from shells.
Using a simple steel pointed engraving tool, the artisan crafts the various layers of mother-of-pearl, working with a thickness of barely two millimetres to create an exceptionally delicate sculpture. The selection of the shells represents a crucial stage in the art of cameo carving. Only the noblest specimens with the most refined colour nuances are deemed worthy to be fashioned by the master-engravers. The latter carefully study the tones, the superimposed levels, the perspectives and all the transparency effects afforded by a given shell. Once the material has been chosen, the artisan scrupulously follows the various pre-defined stages in creating such a miniature marvel. First, he cuts out the shell in its most rounded part. Each piece is then meticulously filed to achieve a perfect curve. Using a pencil, the artist traces the outline of the future work, and the engraving can now begin. This is the most delicate and most artistically sensitive phase in the creative process, and that which enables the cameo carving, once cleaned and polished, to be revealed in all its splendour.
For over 2,000 years, the art of cameo carving — of which the worldwide capital is the town of Torre del Greco in the region of Naples — is based on ancestral know-how that has been faithfully handed down from father to son over countless generations. Although already fairly widespread in Mesopotamia over 4,000 years ago, it was in Ancient Greece that it first earned its renown. Subsequently exported to Rome by Greek artisans, cameo carving reached its peak in Italy. From the 19th century onwards, the region of Naples became the production centre of this world-famous art to which Breguet is now paying tribute.
For any further information, kindly contact:
Leila Khedhari
Press & Public Relations
Montres Breguet SA
1344 L’Abbaye
Switzerland
Email :
[email protected]
Tel : +41 (0)21 841 90 90
Fax : +41 (0)21 841 90 84
Dodie Itaoui
Press & Public Relations
Montres Breguet SA
1344 L’Abbaye
Switzerland
Email :
[email protected]
Tel : +41 (0)21 841 90 90 Tel : +41 (0)21 841 90 90
Fax : +41 (0)21 841 90 84 Fax : +41 (0)21 841 90 84
or consult our website: www.breguet.com